You can fly these beginner-friendly drones right from your phone

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Parrot is no stranger to high-end drones made for aerial photography, but its latest batch of 'MiniDrones' are aimed at the casual crowd — those who want something easy to fly and fun to use.

We've been playing around with two of those new drones, the $99 Airborne Cargo and $129 Airborne Night, for the past couple of weeks, and they fit that vision well. They aren't ideal for anyone who plans to graduate to more complex quads like the DJI Phantom, but they make good presents for kids or novices who just want to get in the air with as little fuss as possible.

In both build and operation, both Airborne drones are largely identical. They're both simple, lightweight machines that each come in a handful of playful colors.

While they're both made entirely of plastic, they're tightly put together. Both have flexible, removable shields around their (also replaceable) rotors, too, so while you shouldn't press your luck, you can generally rest easy if you hit wall or tree.

And while they aren't quite as tiny as the palm-sized Blade Nano QX, they're both small enough to fly indoors or out. Per usual, just try to avoid strong winds if you leave the house.

Also per usual, you shouldn't expect fantastic battery life here. We got between 7-9 minutes per flight on average, which isn't great, but is about the norm for beginner-friendly drones like this. Parrot doesn't include any spares, sadly, nor does it add its own charger. Instead, it sells a combo pack for $23. The batteries are easy to switch in and out, at least, and if you use a USB 3.0 port or your own 2.4A charger, they can be refilled in a solid 25 minutes.

Like the rest of the Parrot drone family, the Cargo and Night are flown entirely through Parrot's FreeFlight 3 app, which is available for both Android and iOS. It puts all the controls right into your phone or tablet, which connects to the quads over Bluetooth 4.0.

As you might expect, a touchscreen isn't as precise as an old-fashioned controller, but Parrot has done a good job of automating the trickier parts of flying. To get in the air, for instance, you just hit the takeoff button. Landing is just as easy, and the drones effectively hover on their own. You can also put caps on how high or fast they can go, letting you work your way up the scale as you see fit. (Or letting you safely dumb down the experience for a child.)

The app has three different flying modes: a simple one that only uses two virtual joysticks, one that adds tilt controls, and one that allows you to make 90 or 180 degree turns on top of that. All of them work just fine, and should be easy for newbies to pick up without much trouble. There's also a handful of preset flip buttons, which let the drones twirl around with a button press. Again, there isn't much precision or nuance here, but it's all very accessible. It's a good, relatively frustration-free time.

There are 640x480 cameras on each device, each located directly underneath the drone's main body. Snapping shots is pretty easy, but the pics themselves are predictably grainy, and you can never totally see what you're looking at, since the app doesn't act as a viewfinder.

The only really differences between the two is that the Airborne Cargo has a little Lego holder on its top (with an included figurine to place there), while the Airborne Night comes with a bunch of small LED lights.

The former is cute, though you shouldn't try to put anything too heavy up there. The latter is customizable through the app — you can make them brighter or turn them into little strobe lights, for instance — and is similarly fun, but since they're only on the top of the device, they're hard to see if you fly too high.

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